(LifeSiteNews) – The state of Maine is suing a Brunswick preacher for protesting outside of a Planned Parenthood location, claiming that John Andrade Jr. is violating the Maine Civil Rights Act by speaking via microphone and playing worship music in the vicinity of the building.
The Maine Wire reported that the suit alleges that the noise Andrade makes is loud enough to be heard inside the facility and violates the law because it is meant to “interfere with the safe and effective delivery” of healthcare services. It seeks to block him from coming within 150 feet of a Planned Parenthood, making audible noises near them, or otherwise interfering with the abortion business.
“In my understanding, it seems that ‘noise’ is not Planned Parenthood’s issue with me,” said Andrade, who has been preaching and protesting outside the facility since 2021. His past activities received various complaints and police visits but never punishment until now.
“Instead, they are opposed to the message of love and salvation through Jesus, along with our message that killing children in the womb is a great evil, and that the lives of these human children in the womb matter,” he said. “No other loud noise near Monument Square is being opposed, only ours. And it appears that they are able to perform abortions just fine even in a loud environment.”
On August 12, he received a warning from police, to which he responded that he did not believe it was valid in light of the fact that a recent and much larger left-wing protest against immigration enforcement also took place in the vicinity and was also quite loud, yet did not appear to be held to the same standard.
Andrade is accused of 12 violations of the Maine Civil Rights Act, each finable up to $5,000 for a potential penalty as high as $60,000.
The abortion industry relies on a variety of legal tactics to try to quash peaceful protest and sidewalk counseling outside their locations despite the First Amendment guaranteeing the rights to freedom of speech and assembly.
In 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court gave pro-abortion bubble (or “buffer”) zone laws a reprieve when it refused to hear Bruni v. City of Pittsburgh, which concerned a 2005 ordinance requiring pro-life activists to stay more than 15 feet away from the entrances to abortion facilities, effectively keeping pro-lifers from communicating with women entering or exiting the building to appeal to them to choose life or offer them assistance with abortion alternatives.
While agreeing that rejecting the particular case was valid on technical grounds because “it involve(d) unclear, preliminary questions about the proper interpretation of state law,” conservative Justice Clarence Thomas urged his colleagues at the time to “take up this issue in an appropriate case to resolve the glaring tension in our precedents” because such laws “often impose serious limits on free speech.”
In the meantime, the Trump administration has instructed the Department of Justice to abide by strict new limits on when the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act should be invoked to prevent it from being used to persecute pro-life activists as it was under the Biden administration. Many pro-lifers believe the FACE Act must still be repealed entirely, arguing that localities can handle local crime on their own and that the danger of a future pro-abortion president abusing the law again is too great.
